Jason Wu Feels Confident Enough to Show Some Nipple

After Jason Wu’s triumphant show today at 82 Mercer, the Soho space that hosted last night’s Chanel dinner, we found the 28-year-old designer backstage, rocking a gray suit with a white flower pin and getting a big hug from his mother. The wunderkind told us he only slept “two or three hours” over the course of “literally three days” while he was finishing his collection. So what was running through his sleep-deprived head while he designed those oversize blazers and headscarves? “There’s an element of [gender play],” he says. “Like with a very feminine evening cocktail dress, I wanted the daywear to have a little masculinity in it. I want that contrast. Even a tweed blazer will have tulle trim or a flower pin like the one I’m wearing. It’s romantic.”

Some of his new pieces, though, are very, uh, feminine: translucent pinks and purples that exposed nipples right on the runway! Of the nipple-exposure, Wu explains: “It was supposed to be confident. I feel very confident as a designer now. I’ve grown up.” Exhausted but rightfully proud, he added: “You know, I feel like the world of Jason Wu has been completed. I wanted that to show through the clothes.” And indeed it did show, ahem, right through the clothes.